The Perfect Storm – An Xperience Interview
Written by Staff on February 1, 2025
The Perfect Storm – An Xperience Interview – by Liam Sweeny.
RRX: Tell me a little bit about the band. Let’s make introductions to everybody out there. What are you guys all about?
James: We are The Perfect Storm. We had formed in January of 2022, during the end of the COVID stuff. We started off kind of like a cover band and then in the early, I’d say fall of that year, we decided to record an album. We played out at some places like the Rustic Barn, for example, trying to get our album noticed. Well, we’ve been on the radio, and now our album comes out on February 21st of this year through Virgin Universal and MTS. Currently, our song “Magic Feeling” is on national and international radio as well.
RRX: Oh, that’s great. That’s awesome. It’s always good to hear stories about people who are from this area that really are able to reach out. I love it. OK, so you started out playing covers, and I know there’s always like this dividing line between bands who play covers and bands who play originals. We all know the dividing line, we all have our feelings one way or the other about it. But you bridge the barrier. You went from playing covers to doing your own stuff. What was that like? Did you just kind of get wanderlust from playing covers, or did you always have a feeling that you’re gonna end up doing original stuff?
Ethan: So I think we always had an idea that we wanted to do original things. We would jam out and come up with random riffs, practicing and soloing back and forth. It all just started growing together. We had a chemistry where we could write songs together, and we all had a similar play style, so it all just kind of seemed to fall into place. But outside of that, we were all doing our own solo things as hobbies before that. So we all liked to create music over the years, and we would send songs back and forth. It seemed like the perfect mold to try to get together and do something bigger than what we were doing by ourselves.
RRX: Putting albums together is a unique and special experience; no two alike. Take me through your process of how you guys put everything together on that first album.
Ethan: We would get together, do a quick demo track. During the week when we can’t get together, I’d be working on refining some of the things, adding different parts. James would be trying to figure out different elements that we could add to the songs, and then every Saturday, we get together for about eight or nine hours and we’d start recording and trying out the different elements that we were working on during the week.
Our album’s image came together; we fit our ideas together and made sure everything flowed nice and smooth. But when we’d get together, a lot of times, that’s when we would find a different element that we didn’t think of while we were sitting there working on parts by ourselves. You get ideas from the bandmates when you get together, and you start figuring out how to make their ideas work with what you’re trying to go with for the song you’re working on.
James: It’s a talented bunch of guys here. We all have our likes and some of them are similar, and some of them are different. And we were able to blend a lot of different styles and things together and make it work pretty well. We feel we have a quality album that listeners will find unique and listenable. But at the same time, it’s commercial, where it can get out there and be on the radio and things. And so far, it’s been moving on the charts. It’s not something that has throwaway songs; it’s stuff that people can actually listen to and appreciate and hopefully listen to for a long time.
RRX: Now, you guys have all done your own side projects, stuff like that, before this. None of you were coming fresh out of the box as a musician, so you’ve all been in other things. So now, having a deal with Virgin Universal and MTS, what would you say is the difference between trying to do all this stuff on your own, and then having that superstructure, I guess you could call it, helping you?
James: Having Virgin Universal and MTS behind you really makes a tremendous difference. You can try to push this stuff, but the way they can push it is unbelievable. I mean, you go from hitting certain local things to where now we’re international. And, literally, like overnight. It’s amazing the marketing power that they have and the connections and the outlets that they can put things on. It’s, you know, one of those things really where you can go from being unknown or known in a small pocket to now being on charts and things worldwide.
RRX: OK. Getting away from the mechanics and stuff like that, tell us a little bit about the album itself. Describe it for me. What are we expecting when this comes out?
Mattie: I think we covered all our bases. And I think the name, we kind of put the name into that too, you know? The Perfect Storm. We’re on three different genre charts right now. I just think it’s got a little bit for everybody; it brings everybody to the party.
Ethan: I would say with the album, we go through almost every stage of life, or maybe every stage of love. We go through the early stages, the good times, the bad times, the life lessons that people learn through long marriages or long-term relationships. We’ve got the whole ups and downs of life, the way we structured it.
James: We also had a lot of different genres. Recently, we were on Buck McCoy’s in Nashville, WNHE – New Music Monday. We won their radio competition, and they just put us into full rotation now in Nashville, on a country market with the “Magic Feeling” song. That song’s in Country, but it’s also in the AC Hot 40, and it’s also in the Pop Hot 40. MTS had told us that we’re on iTunes, what, what number were we? 43. I believe it was for iTunes 100 pop in the UK. So we managed to hit 43 on the Top 100 chart.